The Craz-E Burger: heart stopping but delicious

It has been called everything from “an act of culinary patriotism” to a “sign of the Apocalypse”. The Craz-E Burger is the latest food fad sweeping America. Nick Allen tried one.

 

Published: 8:09AM BST 09 Oct 2009t

Nick Allen eyes up a Craz-E Burger

 

The feast consists of a bacon cheeseburger with a buttered, grilled and glazed doughnut standing in for a bun

The recipe is simple: take one burger dripping in its own fat, garnish with two juicy strips of streaky bacon and a generous wedge of melted, oozing cheese. Then stick the lot inside a glazed and buttered doughnut.

You are left with a gut-busting, 1,500-calorie mountain of sugar and fat that makes a Big Mac look like a health snack.

And if that’s not enough to satisfy your yearning for lard you can also try deep frying the doughnut first. On no account add any lettuce or tomato. This meal is a nutrition free zone.

Health conscious celebrity chefs would probably have a heart attack at the very thought of the Craz-E Burger but the truth is it’s somewhat of a taste sensation. It combines the feeling of chomping on a cheeseburger with the satisfaction of sating a sweet tooth.

There’s also no need for dessert because the lingering taste of sugar means you feel like you’ve already had one. The whole heart stopping ensemble takes just 10 minutes to prepare and the result looks pretty unappealing. But after the first bite I was hooked.

The doughnut was much tastier and sweeter than a normal, bland hamburger bun and the sugar helps to meld the other ingredients together. After wolfing one down in a few minutes I felt like another straightaway.

Some 3,000 calories later I felt distinctly fatter but definitely ready to repeat the exercise the next day. It was delicious. My heart didn't stop beating and my arteries were still flowing.

In notoriously calorie conscious Los Angeles the Craz-E-Burger may face an uphill struggle to catch on so I decided to test it out on Amber Smith, 38, a healthy Hollywood actress and model. After looking more than a little cautiously at the gargantuan burger on her plate Miss Smith tucked in and nearly finished the lot.

“It’s a funny taste but it's really not bad,” she said. “Not bad at all. I like it. It’s like having a burger and a dessert and putting them together so it’s fast, fast food. If I was hungry I’d definitely eat the whole thing.

“Lots of people wouldn’t want to be seen dead with a burger like that though, it’s twice the amount of calories some women in Los Angeles have in a day. It's tasty though."

Miss Smith was less enthusiastic about the addition of a deep fried doughnut to her Craz-E Burger. "It burns the glaze off the doughnut so it's not as sweet," she said. "It's just like eating a burger soaked in oil."

Like two other American staples – Coca Cola and chocolate chip cookies – the Craz-E Burger was produced by accident. While the inventor of Coca Cola was trying to make a medicinal tonic, the creator of the Craz-E Buger was a chef in Decatur, Georgia who ran out of burger baps and, in desperation, used doughnuts instead.

He originally called it the Luther Burger because the singer Luther Vandross was reputed to like them. The name Craz-E Burger was chosen in a competition on Facebook, winning out over other more descriptive suggestions like “Heart Attack on a Bun” and “The E-Normous.”

It only came to national prominence this week after going on sale at the Big E, an agricultural fair in Massachusetts where the burgers were snapped up at the rate of 1,000 a day.

The merits of the doughnut burger have now divided America with some claiming it marks the beginning of the end. Doctors say it's a killer.

Leading the anti-burger charge Shepard Smith, the influential Fox News anchor, said: “Good God. There are a lot of ways to end it all. You could take a bottle of pills...or you could just eat one of those. I don’t know man, there are signs of the Apocalypse, you hear about them, this may be one of them.”

Perhaps he’d feel differently if he tried one.